July 2001 - Finishing Mechanical Restoration

The easy stuff is really what's left to start driving. I did some traveling in California, and I'll cover that in the next few weeks. Lots of photos to go through, and some help from one of the 2002 world's best resources. The wife bought me a new digital camera for my birthday, a Fuji Finepix 4700, so getting more pictures onto the site in less time will be a snap.

Does your car have these rubber pieces installed? Somewhere along the line, the rubber that keeps the air going straight into the passenger compartment was gone. I've not seen a pair of these survive 26+ years without being totally petrified. I was able to secure a new set of the under hood rubber seals for $70 and noticed immediately that there was more cool air coming in. However, it's July and in the Midwest, any air coming this time of year is completely humid.

Breaking out the Wurth wheel paint... I have been driving the car with these MSW wheels since St. Patricks day in Gold. Ok, I know...that Gold wheel thing begins to wear on you. Since I'm planning on keeping these wheels and tires for a while until the rubber on my E30 wears down significantly and I transplant it's BBS wheels to the 02, I decided to somewhat tidy up the place. If you've seen the ads for Wurth wheel paint but not seen it at work, here's the evidence. I also added the BMW Roundels to the center caps (part # 36131181082) to finish off the project. What do you think? The Wurth paint is $20 a can, but it looks great and with the coat of clear over it, they look as good as new.

The trunk opened up fine but I could not lock it... I was able to transplant another trunk lock with a key to the car but not without some pain. Don't make this mistake yourself... I thought I had the lock working right but when I closed the trunk, no action... YIKES!!!! after much deliberation, I finally broke into the trunk by destroying the right rear tail light (I had a new one waiting in the box, so it wasn't too painful) and reaching inside with a socket wrench and unscrewing the trunk lid latch. Once I had that done, I figured it was time to clean up the whole think and do it right. Hence, it's looking like it should... and it locks!

That old red bumper had to go... In the process of removing it I decided to take some photos of what I did to clean up the mold that was growing under the bumper and how I re-attached the bumper. There's a how-to-do that I'm working on that covers the reassembly of the side covers and the covers that go over the bumper shocks. Man was it dirty under there (and of course, "rusty" to the max).